


On the Nature of a Side

by UrsulaKohl



Category: Flatland - Edwin A. Abbott, Possession - A. S. Byatt
Genre: Crossover, Epistolary, F/F, F/M, Mathematics, Poetry, Romantic Friendship, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 06:51:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13094712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrsulaKohl/pseuds/UrsulaKohl
Summary: Once one has uncovered a set of nineteenth-century letters, one is forever an expert upon such discoveries, even if they entail the mathematical fantasia of a person such as Agnes Hart, niece to the famed educator Edwin Abbott Abbott.





	On the Nature of a Side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CenozoicSynapsid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CenozoicSynapsid/gifts).



From: Maud Bailey  
To: Roland Michell  
Date: December 10, 1991  
Subject: correspondence

Dear Roland,

It still feels odd to be typing a letter to you, and odder yet to imagine that it will arrive before it left: we have spent so much time, these last few years, calculating postage or reserving pennies to eke out another five minutes of long-distance telephone calls that the glowing screen and this so-called electronic mail seem rather like the djinni's lamp.

The end of term here has been characterized by a remarkable set of demands from the press. Once one has uncovered a set of nineteenth-century letters, one is forever an expert upon such discoveries, I find: no matter how loudly I protest my ignorance of mathematics, or German universities, or Christian Socialists, the calls keep coming. I am almost tempted to send the reporters to Dr. Nest: she knows all too well the correspondence of clergymen's daughters, and perhaps Mrs. Ash even received a few stiff notes from Miss Hart. But I have smiled, and remarked that nineteenth-century women enjoyed greater vistas of imagination (and, for that matter, opportunity) than less enlightened historians have wished to grant them, and been misquoted trying to work out some more complicated thought, on metaphors and needles. And in a few short days I shall fold myself into an airplane and be with you, not opining upon any thing.

Yours ever,  
Maud.

* * *

  
Leipzig  
1 Oct. 1885

My dearest Charlotte,

I have attained the object of my quest! For I am officially styled a "hearer" at the University, and may attend as many lectures as I like, and tire my mind with as many equations and maxims about the workings of the universe as it may hold. You know that I was anxious that the knowledge of German I have toiled for, over so many books and essays, would fail me entirely when called upon to make conversation. But I find that all my fears were for naught: the other residents of my pension are two American women and a Canadian, and we chatter away in English all together. My new Canadian friend studies to play the piano, and has all the expression I ever despaired of attaining.

I am gladdened that the mathematical scribblings of our uncle Mr. Edwin Abbott have reached the level of fame that you report. And yet, I share your frustration at the plight of women in his imagined realm. You will tell me that it is all allegorical, but I could wish his allegories were prettier. I am convinced that Mr. Square, and thus our uncle, was not possessed of the full story. You will find enclosed some diagrams that exhibit all the fruits of my new learning.

I am, as always, your most affectionate cousin,  
Agnes Hart.

* * *

  
The following text is excerpted from:

_The Travels and Adventures of Mrs. Pentagon, or_  
_The Story of How a Lowly Line Segment Traveled the Circumference of the World_  
_Together with Some Musings Upon the Nature of a Side_

Gentlest of readers, as the fame of Flatland has reached outside my native Realm, you will have heard of the Peace-cry that we Ladies of Flatland make, in all our waking hours. You may have supposed it designed for the protection of our Menfolk from what they call our baser instinct. But indeed, though assumptions of baseness and naïveté have their merits-- have we not all heard the tale of the woman who, having rid herself of a tyrannical and vulgar Husband, claimed she remembered not an iota of her own sharp attack?-- the Peace-cry has a purpose that serves Ladies themselves. For all of us know, from the time we are the smallest of girls, that if we do not maintain a constant movement or vibration, as is produced by the Peace-cry-- if we hold still for even the shortest of instants-- we may pierce the fabric of the World itself, and slip through to the other Side.

How would we know, you ask, which Side we were on? If we were slipping back and forth, from one side to the other, from our earliest days, would it not all seem one fabric, a single continuous impression? We are able to differentiate, it transpires, based on the continuous Attraction, that every resident of Flatland feels toward the South. We women are not entirely Line Segments, but slightly wider at the point where lies our Mouth or Eye, and thus our heads feel a somewhat stronger attraction to the South than do our other ends. If we face toward the East, we will inevitably tend to rotate our bodies so that our Eyes move right and to the South.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/154530705@N08/24345659997/in/dateposted-public/)

Let a woman start to spin, then, East to South, and be silent for a moment, so that she slips to the other Side of Flatland. What happens? Gentle reader, happy citizen of Spaceland, you may make a model and examine both Sides yourself. You will find that an arrow pointing to the right seems from the other Side of your flat paper-- if you will-- to be pointing left. Thus East is traded with West, and what had been a pleasant rightwise spin now moves leftwise, widdershins.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/154530705@N08/25341743738/in/dateposted-public/)

I wondered, when a nearly pointlike Child, what it would be like to live in the backwards-spinning land all the time, and know the People there.

* * *

  
From M. Bailey, ed., _Fairy Stories: The Fantastic and Mundane in Victorian Women's Writing_ (Oxford: Taylor  & Francis, 1994), p. xii:

The dichotomies of spoken/unspoken and written/unwritten loom large in Janet Parry's contribution to this volume. In Edwin Abbott Abbott's account, the women of Flatland spoke constantly and yet had no memory or understanding. In the revisionist version written by his niece Agnes Hart, trained in mathematics and physics at Universität Leipzig, for Flatland women speech is a protection, but silence a means of traveling to other realms. Parry argues that Hart's decision to circulate her tales in manuscript form demonstrates a metatextual tension between silence and speech: in her reluctance to claim an official position as Author, Hart declares her allegiance to a different role, that of a student of mathematical physics . . .

* * *

  
From _The Travels and Adventures of Mrs. Pentagon_ :

My Husband, ever affable, drew to him an odd collection of Philosophers and Naturalists. At that time, many educated Shapes in our part of Flatland were interested in a curious coincidence: travelers' accounts of the inhabitants of the far West bore more than a passing resemblance to stories about the doings and sayings of Shapes in the far East. The duller Triangles held that all travelers were liars. But my husband's friends put forward more surprising suggestions. Most Flatland children assumed that the world, like any other Shape, had an Edge. But could one reach it? Would somebody approaching the easternmost or westernmost boundary of the world be slowed by some mysterious force, akin to the attraction that draws every inhabitant of Flatland to the South? Or might the travelers' accounts be explained by a phenomenon whereby anyone reaching an Edge was instantaneously transported from one side of Flatland to the other, as if an Angel or Fairy had whisked him across?

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/154530705@N08/38330930985/in/dateposted-public/)

I wondered, if somehow my husband and I could travel to the Edge of the world, would the journey permit us to meet the inhabitants of the other Side, and live among them for a time? I put the question to some of the most free-thinking Philosophers, explaining that just as I had a left and a right, perhaps there was a sort of leftishness and rightishness to the entire world. But he only laughed and asked for more tea, so I was left to ponder my question by myself. If one could slide past an Edge to the other Side, I thought, perhaps that would work. But if a mysterious Force transferred voyagers from one edge to the other, we would be stuck always upon our own Side, except for those excursions I took quietly by myself.

You, gentle Reader, who are privileged to live in Spaceland, may build a model of the world that I envisioned. Take a strip of paper, that is already like Flatland in miniature, and paste one end of it to the other, forming a Cylinder. The mysterious Force of transference is then nothing more nor less than sliding past the region where you pasted. Furthermore, you will find that the two Sides of your sheet of paper persist, one now what you might call the Outside, and the other an Inside.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/154530705@N08/39207211841/in/dateposted-public/)

Though it had begun as idle curiosity, the question of the Edge soon became an obsession for both my dear Mr. Pentagon and me. Perhaps, we mused, in these days of modern conveyances, it would be possible to find out. Nothing would do but that we should join an expedition, and sooner than one would think, we found ourselves enrolled as passengers upon an exploring vehicle, a sort of Ship or Cart carefully manufactured to point always in the same direction. I even had my own particular Hammock, a complicated web designed to sway with the motion of our Ship, so that I might rest without terrifying the Men with my presence.

We set out, pointing due East, with great excitement.

* * *

  
Leipzig  
21 Nov. 85

My dearest Charlotte,

Thank you for your musings upon the nature of sparrows and triangles. It seems silly to complain that the sky is dark and grey in a different way from what one is used to, and yet I have been feeling exactly that, and was pleased to think of brown birds in your hedges. I feel sillier yet because the work has been delightful. I have been following Professor Doctor von der Mühll's course, which touches now upon electrodynamics and the method of potentials. How strange to think of, not a force, but the possibility of a force, spreading all the way through the world. And stranger still to think that, unlike gravity, one particle might respond to the possibility and another remain entirely inert.

But I have not yet answered your question about triangles! Your observations about the limitations of natural variation between sexes, even when one is, like the peacock, moved to display, are quite apt. I agree with you that the head or mouth of the women of Flatland must indeed be a very narrow line segment. Perhaps a few lucky souls are recognized as triangles in fact, and may avoid the strictures of their sex in favor of romantic adventure, perhaps serving as a soldier or running away to sea?

Though I should not wish to go to sea, when I learn so many new things here on land.

Yours, always,  
Agnes Hart.

* * *

  
From _The Travels and Adventures of Mrs. Pentagon_ :

One morning I arose from my Hammock to find the crew embroiled in a furious argument. I feared at first some damage to our Ship. Yet its steady motion proceeded as designed. The direction of the conveyance had not changed, nor could it. Why, then, were half the Men insisting that we still faced East, and the others shouting just as loudly we had turned to the West?

The question was easily solved, I thought. I felt, as always, the attraction of every Flatland resident toward the South. And surely I had not lost track of my left and right. What conclusion should I draw?

Facing in the direction of the Ship, I felt myself impelled to spin leftward, widdershins. My natural rotation had, I realized, reversed. If not for the presence of an entire Ship full of Men, I would have instantly assumed that in my sleep I had slipped through to the other Side of the world.

* * *

  
From M. Bailey, private communication (to J. Parry), January 1993:

I think you would do better simply to remark on Agnes Hart's penchant for romantic friendship, rather than attempting to place her at a specific point on the modern continuum of sexualities. Such over-precision ignores the great variety of human affections, then and now. (I still receive letters from enthusiasts who, under the strange misapprehension that emotion is finite, accuse me of having betrayed the sisterhood by uncovering LaMotte's love for Ash.)

* * *

  
From Christabel LaMotte, _Collected Works,_ ed. L. Stern, (New York: Penguin, 1990), p. 37:

The Needle holds a Memory  
of where the Lodestone touched.  
The Stone attracts all sorts of Things.  
He won't regret her-- much--

* * *

  
From _The Travels and Adventures of Mrs. Pentagon_ :

After days of pondering the conundrum, I was overcome one morning by the most startling Hypothesis. I had always assumed the most southerly points formed an Edge of the world. But what if that were not so? Suppose the region of attraction was instead a segment at the middle of the world, a sort of belt or girdle about Flatland? 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/154530705@N08/39207211571/in/dateposted-public/)

And, further, what if that Fairy or Force that transferred the most venturesome of voyagers had a sense of humor? Exiting an Edge at one height, one might reappear at quite a different height, on the other side of that southerly belt.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/154530705@N08/25341743338/in/dateposted-public/)

Gentle Reader, you may build a model of this truth of Flatland I discovered. Take, again, your strip of paper and your paste, but make a half Twist before you paste the sides together, so that the Side that had been back and the Side that had been front are identified with each other. That belt of attraction, that we call South, is now a circle at the center of your twisted strip.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/154530705@N08/39179538322/in/dateposted-public/)

I had, indeed, voyaged to the other Side of Flatland, inasmuch as anyone could: for, I admit, it had only had one Side all along. But my failure was not in imagining leftishness and rightishness. It was that I could not envision the whole Shape of my world, till I had left my home.

**Author's Note:**

> For CenozoicSynapsid. Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Thank you to Cathexys for an insightful beta-read at nearly the last minute.
> 
> August Möbius was a professor of astronomy and higher mechanics at the University of Leipzig until his death in 1868. A student of mathematical physics would have had many opportunities to learn of his ideas. I am indebted to Anja Warner's book The Transatlantic World of Higher Education for a sense of life among foreign students there in the nineteenth century (the women who attended courses at Leipzig included, among others, Anna Leonowens, whose writing inspired the musical The King and I; she studied Sanskrit).


End file.
